ABSTRACT
Humans, like other species that have resulted from the process of evolution, are incredibly complex, having organization and structure down to the subcellular level. In contrast to other species, we, human beings, are no longer passive components in the evolutionary process, since we are actively changing our environment to suit ourselves, and we have developed medical procedures to change our body within our lifespan. Our natural human form and behavior appear inherently fascinating to us, being a subject of art and literature, and of science. Advances in materials, arti„cial intelligence (AI), speech synthesis, image, and speech recognition and many other capabilities mean that it is increasingly feasible to create lifelike robots that have characteristics same as our de„ning characteristics (BarCohen and Breazeal, 2003; Bar-Cohen and Hanson, 2009). Sociable humanlike robots that express emotions verbally and facially as well as respond emotionally are being developed with impressive capabilities (Breazeal, 2002; Bar-Cohen and Hanson, 2009). Electroactive polymers (EAP), also known as arti„cial muscles (Bar-Cohen, 2004; Chapter 6), are showing great promise in enabling biologically inspired mechanisms that were once considered mere science „ction ideas. Robots with humanlike attributes are known by many names including humanoids, androids, and automatons (Perkowitz, 2004; Bar-Cohen and
CONTENTS
16.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................477 16.2 Historical Review ...............................................................................................................480 16.3 Potential Applications and Implications ........................................................................ 482 16.4 Producing a Humanlike Robot ........................................................................................484 16.5 Humanlike Robots and Their Bene„ts ...........................................................................488 16.6 Conclusions-Challenges, Trends, and Potential Development ................................ 490 Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... 491 References ..................................................................................................................................... 492 Web Sites ....................................................................................................................................... 493
Hanson, 2009). On the basis of the degree of similarity of humanlike robots to humans, the author has used the following terms to describe such robots:
Humanoids are robots that mimic the general appearance of humans and, so they include a head, arms, and possibly legs and eyes. Humanoids have a mechanistic likeness to humans; for example, in many instances the head may be shaped as a helmet, and thus it may have neither the form nor the features of a natural human head. Making such robots is easier than exactly copying the external human form. Example of a humanoid is the REEM_A (made by Pal Robotics, Spain) that is shown in Figure 16.1. Humanoids are already at advanced stages of technological readiness, allowing them to perform many tasks, and some of them are available commercially.
